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European Court Finds Copyright Doesn't Automatically Trump Freedom Of Expression
First time accepted submitter admiral snackbar writes "The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. 'For the first time in a judgment on the merits, the European Court of Human Rights has clarified that a conviction based on copyright law for illegally reproducing or publicly communicating copyright protected material can be regarded as an interference with the right of freedom of expression and information under Article 10 of the European Convention [on Human Rights]. Such interference must be in accordance with the three conditions enshrined in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention. This means that a conviction or any other judicial decision based on copyright law, restricting a person's or an organization's freedom of expression, must be pertinently motivated as being necessary in a democratic society, apart from being prescribed by law and pursuing a legitimate aim.'"
There's something you owe the french.
Your freedom.
And most of your constitution.
TFA is crap, but links to a post with more details.
the applicants were Robert Ashby Donald, Marcio Madeira Moraes and Olivier Claisse, respectively an American, a Brazilian and a French national living in New-York, Paris and Le Perreux-sur-Marne. All three are fashion photographers. The case concerned their conviction in France for copyright infringement following the publication of pictures on the Internet site Viewfinder of a fashion company run by Mr. Donald and Mr. Moraes. The photos were taken by Mr. Claisse at fashion shows in Paris in 2003 and published without the permission of the fashion houses. The three fashion photographers were ordered by the Court of Appeal of Paris to pay fines between 3.000 and 8.000 euro and an award of damages to the French design clothing Federation and five fashion houses, all together amounting to 255.000 euro
Notably,
In the case of Ashby Donald and others v. France the European Court of Human Rights did not need to undertake itself such a balancing exercise, as it found that the French judicial authorities have done this exercise in a proper way. As the Court stated, it saw no reason to disagree with the findings by the French courts
I.e., the ruling didn't do squat to help the defendants in this case.
it's = it is
While I agree with your main point, this ruling is from the European Court of Human Rights which is not an EU institution. All member states of the EU, and indeed the EU itself, is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights -- but so are several other countries that are not EU member states.
From Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights ):
"The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) in Strasbourg, France is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. ... . The court, as is also the Council Of Europe, is not part and is a completely separate body from the European Union and its court, the European Court of Justice. The latter is based in Luxembourg."
Therefore, it has nothing to do with European Union Project that tried to pass ACTA and other copyright friendly policies.
Hate to tell you this, but only a minority of Europeans actually live in France, there are a few other countries in the EU...
Thanks for your attention, I hope you enjoyed your geography lesson.
Hate to tell you but the European Court of Human Rights is not an EU court but a COE (council of europe) court.
While the EU has had a lot of criticism (some of it justified) for it's costs, it's impenetrable bureaucracy, and it's tendency to focus on the minutia rather than bigger problems, I think that it would be impossible to practically enact vital laws and opinions such as this on an international scale without it.
An ironic comment, given that this ruling was made by the European Court of Human Rights, which is not a part of the EU machinery (and in fact applies in far more countries and has been around for far longer).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Just for some thoughts, quote: "The Convention prohibits in particular: torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, slavery and forced labour, death penalty, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention."
(to be found at http://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/EN/Header/The+Court/Introduction/Information+documents/ )
How is that in the US of A?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Wikipedia: "With a combined population of over 500 million inhabitants, or 7.3% of the world population, the EU, in 2011, generated the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 17.6 trillion US dollars, representing approximately 20% of the global GDP when measured in terms of purchasing power parity."
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
It's simple really. Just remember that the apostrophe ALWAYS represents one or more letters having between removed. In the case of the possessive, it's due to a missing "e" that used to be used (the possessive form was made with "es" - e.g. "Peter's cat" really represents "Peteres cat"). This is quite visible in other Germanic languages, but quite hidden in English due to the weird history of our language.
In the case of the possessive "its", it was never written "ites" and therefore does not receive an apostrophe. Similarly, "his" and "her" also never had the "es" ending and therefore also do not contain an apostrophe.
"It's" contains an apostrophe for the missing "i" from "it is" (or in some cases the missing "ha" from "it has") and so it becomes very clear that the apostrophe is required.
If all that is too confusing or simply too hard to remember, relate things back to "his" and "her". You can grammatically replace "its" with "his" and still make sense, so it similarly doesn't take an apostrophe ("Its impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His impenetrable bureaucracy" (no problem)). "It's" on the other hand can never be grammatically replaced by "his" ("It's got impenetrable bureaucracy" -> "His got impenetrable bureaucracy" (meaningless)).
The alternative (and more common, but less obvious to me personally) method is to go the other way around and mentally try replacing "its"/"it's" with "it is" to see if that fits.
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Huh? People eat all of the animals you listed (except perhaps falcons). Horse meat is taboo in the US, but commonly eaten in France and Italy. Donkey meat is not as common, but still consumed in Europe. Dogs and cats are eaten in Asia. Animals don't really care what you do with them when you die - you are anthropomorphizing.
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